REAL JOBS & FALSE BOUNDARIES Published March 11, 1996 Other columns by Harry Goldstein

Ask anyone in New York City under the age of 40 what they do and you're likely to get two answers for the price of one: I'm a (fill in the blank: writer, actor, poet, singer, musician, performance artist, painter, sculptor, film maker), but for a living I'm a (bookstore clerk, waiter, word processor, temp worker, office manager, assistant editor, assistant producer, executive assistant, UPS driver, dietitian, deli clerk). Usually there is an earnest attempt at dividing out the vocation, the calling as it were, from the occupation, the job, the rat race we run to pay the bills. Since college I've roamed the vast wasteland of temporary jobs: secretary, data entry operator, receptionist, Kinko's copy boy, mail room clerk, even a one day stint packing up the Pink Panther's subsidiary rights office. I've also held down "real jobs" as an assistant to the VP of sales at a children's publisher, an office manager for a educational non-profit, an assistant to an ad exec and (currently) an assistant editor at a trade magazine. For the first few years out of college, I tried to maintain the boundary between work for money and work for love, which in my case is fiction writing. At parties, I'd earnestly introduce myself as a writer only to be forced to answer the inevitable follow-up question--"So how do you make ends meet?" -- with a slightly embarrassed admission or, depending on how much I had to drink and who was asking, a defiant, in-your-face declaration of my temporary worker status. But it wasn't until I started writing my first novel that I realized I had slotted different aspects of my life into false compartments. In order to counter my own feelings of insecurity, I needed people to perceive me as a writer as opposed to identifying me as a secretary, word processor, mail room clerk or office assistant. After all, I had invested a lot of time and money in my education, including an M.A. in creative writing. I had poured my heart and soul into constructing a vocational identity and having people see me as a writer was essential to being a writer. As far as I was concerned, it didn't matter what I did for a living, as long as I was writing and as long as people knew that my life was going exactly according to plan. It became clear, however, that this division between who I was, essentially, and what I did to make money was very fluid. My job connected me to the world. Standing around the coffee machine, complaining about the boss with my co-workers is a real, valuable and above all, a very necessary activity. At my job, I connect with people from all different backgrounds, many, if not most, of whom regard their jobs as what they "do." I'm privileged to have a vocation which can help me make sense of the conditions my co-workers and I have to endure, sitting in front of a computer terminal for an 8 hour shift inputting numbers, for example. Or filling out endless forms for people who couldn't speak English, just so they could be counted for the 1990 census. This is a world I know intimately, that enters my dreams and eventually filters into my fiction. I'm not saying that I expect to see some hard-core grunge band torquing out songs about running off resumes at Kinko's or spoken word performers belting out screeds about pulling espresso at Starbucks. My point is that your job, whatever it is, is just as integral to your emotional and imaginative life, your REAL LIFE, as food, love, money and death and just as legitimate a subject to be explored with whatever vocational tools you might have at your disposal. Harry Goldstein is a writer and editor living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in Utne Reader, American Book Review, Promethean, AltX, word.com, and other periodicals. © 1996 Harry Goldstein, All Rights Reserved